Someone from work came in this morning and said fall began already- I don't remember any year where there had been this much differing perception of when the season actually changed. Usually your local meteorologist will mention it as well, so if he was wrong, call and complain.

Not joking. Since there was no reference to it in the links in today's OotB and I'm not familiar with the torrent sites (I do know what it is, just never use or knew the names of popular sites), I had to ask.

Suprnova was a very populat Bit Torrent site, probably THE most popular site. From it you could find torrents for TV, movies, music, software, etc. It got shut down for... obvious reasons.

As I've noted previously, nobody ever got a rootkit from Vinyl. They might be inaudibly (hopefully) watermarked but they won't be DRM'ed to uselessness either. And they wonder why they're becoming popular again.

Now if only they can be made smaller and more durable...

My music is pretty much exclusively iTunes now. My only concern is that the format stands the test of time and I can use it 10+ years in the future. Fortunatley I haven't invested that much in music- I think I wasted far more on cassette tapes when I was younger- what a waste that was.

I couple years back I got a "low disk space warning", so I went on a deleting spree. Went into my junc files foldre and the first file I deleted got a warning "there is not enough disk space to delete this file" or something of the like- because instead of deleting when you tell it to delete, windoze makes a COPY of the file.

I think declining sales are due to market saturation more than anything else (being "not cool/trendy/fashionable" is a lame excuse IMO). You've got the people who are going to buy an ipod each time a new rev is introduced, and then you got the people (like me) who bought one 3 years ago and don't have any need or desire to replace it unless it dies. The former is much smaller than the latter, and as more and more of the 2nd group buy ipods, the sales figures will decline.

Smoking has been banned in bars, etc, since 1998. Most indoor workplaces were covered starting in 1995. Only casinos, etc, on Indian reservations and some small businesses with no employees are exempt, IIRC.

Thank GOD! That shit is nasty.

Rhode Island went smoke free about 2-3 years ago. A few people complained at first, but no one really talks about it anymore. Now its strange when I'm traveling out of state and walk into a restaurant and they ask "smoking or non."

the story is a bit out of date, since its now in orbit. And the crew usually has to get out when there is a launch delay, since they have to strap in a few hours before liftoff. Also this time they had to drain the LH2 tank and refill it to correct the fuel sensor glitch.

Problem is, with vaulted ceilings, you cannot run lines through a non-existant attic after construction is complete.

The vaulted ceiling runs the entire length of the house, with only one phone jack (master bedroom) on the same side of the house as the other two bedrooms. The only way to run a line to the other rooms is outside....

20 more minutes to isolate it to the wire that runs up the side of the house from the line in,

So by this I can assume one of 2 things:

1. The phone line is inside the wall and your house is not weather-tight,

or

2. There is bare phone wire running up the OUTSIDE of the house.

If #1 is the case, you have more serious problems than a flaky phone line.

If #2 is the case, WTH is there a phone line OUTSIDE of the house? Sounds like a crap job by the phone company when they did the initial install, or possibly an ill-conceived DIY install? I know you can put wiring in conduits to keep them out of the weather, but its still ugly as fuck seeing these things running along the outside of a house.

I've seen an extreme case of this in my area- there's a house down the street from me (an apartment house undoubtedly) that has a cluster of FOUR satellite dishes all on one corner of the house (I assume 4 apts, even though the house only looks big enough for 3 at MOST), and a virtual spaghetti maze of conduits and cables running all up and down the OUTSIDE WALL of said house. Looks like major hack job.

Our house is essentially 3 stories (attic is "level" with one of the bedrooms) and is still DWARFED by the trees in our yard.

Doesn't sound like a good place for a backyard observatory either. Nothing wrong with being in the woods (in fact I find it highly desireable), but one of my primary criteria for my property search is having at least a portion of open sky to the south.

there's a huge hickory (I think) tree exactly on our SW corner that blocks everything. No, it's not on our property, and it'd be a shame to destroy anyway.

I remember there being an ad on TV w while back- undoubtedly promoting cable TV service over satellite- that depicted someone cutting down trees in their yard to get better signal. I always assumed it was just exaggeration for the sake of advertising, but is this something people actually DO (or consider doing)?